


The Strength to Protect What Matters

by LenciaAnn



Category: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - Rick Riordan, RIORDAN Rick - Works
Genre: Cuddling, Deaf Character, Demigods, Love as a power, M/M, The Power Of Love, The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase) Spoilers, Why does no one talk about how Blitzen is a demigod, can be read as platonic or romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24372469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LenciaAnn/pseuds/LenciaAnn
Summary: Blitzen is a demigod.  He doesn't like that word, but it is true.  His mother is the Goddess of Love.  Not that this has EVER been a useful thing.  His mother's blood has only ever made his life difficult.  From his chosen craft, to the target on his back, being the son of Freya has brought nothing but trouble.  Right?Perhaps she has bestowed on him a power afterall.
Relationships: Blitzen & Hearthstone, Blitzen/Hearthstone
Comments: 6
Kudos: 70





	The Strength to Protect What Matters

**Author's Note:**

> I have not been able to get out of my head - Blitzen is a demigod. And he faced a dragon unarmed, who wanted nothing more to punish and kill Hearthstone. He got that dragon to back down and retreat from him with the force of his words and determination to keep Hearthstone safe. That's the power of love - his mother is the goddess of love - oh yes, I had to write it.

It’s a more-than-mild rocking of the boat that wakes Blitzen from his sleep. Less like some rocky waves and more like something really big just hit the water beside them. He pushed himself up a little, listening for a long moment, but when he didn’t hear anything that sounded particularly alarming or like the ceiling was about to come crashing down, he lay back down on the berth he’d thrown himself on when he and Hearthstone stumbled down into the hold.

Oh, speaking of the elf – Hearthstone stirred under his arm even as Blitz resettled, tired grey eyes reflecting the dim lighting of the hold. “Shh,” Blitz put his hand on the back of Hearth’s head and tried to get him to settle back in. “It’s okay.”

Normally they might have taken separate beds… but… after everything with Hearth’s father, neither really felt like being alone. The close proximity helped with nightmares. It didn’t chase them away entirely – and gods knew the past year gave them a whole slew of new and horrific images that liked get creative with the assorted bag of issues they each carried that probably would take years of therapy to work through – but it did help. Sometimes it’s the little things.

Blitz closed his eyes, sighing softly, trying to will himself back to sleep. But after a long moment he cracked one eye open and yup, Hearth was staring at him. “What?” Blitz asked. “Are you okay?”

_Are we not going to talk about what you did?_ Hearth moved his hands out from under the blankets only the bare minimum that he needed for signing. _With the dragon._

Blitz tisked and shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

_You faced a dragon unarmed_ , Hearth reminded him. _You scolded my father. A person who listens to no one._

“I don’t like bullies,” Blitz said stubbornly.

_Don’t make me use the D-word,_ Hearth warned, and Blitz fell silent. After a moment, Hearth moved closer, his head tucked against Blitz’s neck. _It’s okay to be afraid of it._

The D-Word. Demigod. For some people – like Magnus, like Sam – Demigod meant something. Their parents were selective and bestowed gifts upon their children in strange and amazing ways. And sometimes sinister ways, if you were looking at Loki. But still. There was a conscious decision in there.

His mother produced children as a side effect of her addiction to retail therapy. There were so many of them they were literally their own subrace. Sure, some were more direct like himself, but when you can have a whole group of people separately identified by ONE goddess’s distraction by shiny objects, well… it wasn’t so exceptional anymore.

Dwarves are matrilineal. He’d gotten used to saying ‘Blitzen, son of Freya’ with a straight face, with practice, but there had always been the side glances, the silent and unsaid ‘AH’. He might as well have no mother in the eyes of the dwarves. 

He didn’t have any other Svartalf children in his classes like him. There was a handful of second or third generation kids, but he was easily taller than all of them when they were younger. He was always put in the back of the classroom because no one could see over his head if he sat in front of them. But, it was easy to draw all the way in the back. Doodling outfits – perfectly coordinated – while the teacher droned on about dwarvish history or handed them clay and told them to make something.

When he was really little, too young to understand what her name really meant to the Svartalfs, he’d gotten into so many fights with the other kids that his nose was permanently crooked. It had finally been one of those times, as his dad tipped his head back trying to stop the bleeding, that he’d been told why. Why he was singled out. Why he rarely saw his beautiful but un-nurturing mother. Why the other kids whispered behind their backs.

And it broke his heart.

He couldn’t help who his mother was. He couldn’t change his blood. He was forever damned to be one of the big dwarfs in a crowd. The one tasked with getting things off high shelves. Already taller than his father by the time he was ten.

For most Svartalfs, his older half siblings and their kin, they were normal enough to fit into dwarven society. But not Blitzen. He was strange even among the strange. Not dwarf enough for dwarves, but too dwarf for the other races.

He’d been beside Magnus when Njord appeared. Magnus’s grandfather. THEIR grandfather. The decent was the same. And yet Magnus was the grandson and named as such. And Blitzen? He was the dwarf. (Not that he wasn’t proud to be a dwarf! Because he was.)

But unlike Magnus who had healing powers from his father, or Sam and Alex’s shape-shifting, the Svartalfs didn’t get anything special from Freya. The best of their abilities came from their dwarven side. If anything, his mother’s blood made his life harder. Like wearing two left shoes, there was always something just slightly off, always. The most he got from his mother was his height and his eye for aesthetic which only served to make him different and not fit in with everyone else. That’s what he’d always heard. That’s what he’d always believed.

And yet.

He thought back to the cave. He was supposed to be standing by to help pull Magnus out of the hole. But he hadn’t been able to stay still, or stay put. He hadn’t been able to listen to Hearth’s father speak to him like that. Something had... boiled up in his gut. Had made him so angry. So protective. It was practically a compulsion beyond his control. An instinct he could only obey. So what if that was a literal dragon? No one was going to speak to Hearthstone like that.

So he’d stared down a dragon. Challenged it and pushed it back, knowing that it could have killed him as easily as breathing. He’d done it, and even knowing the foolishness… he knew that he would do it again in a heartbeat. To protect his best friend. The person in all the words that mattered most.

_She is the goddess of love._ Hearth’s hands moved on his chest. _It might not be a flashy power, but it’s strong._ He pressed his hand firmly over Blitzen’s heart where it beat faithfully in his chest.

Goddess of Love. He could remember, the first time someone had asked, it was one of his cousins. They’d been playing with coal, seeing if any of them could turn it into something approaching a diamond – dumb shit kids did because they were told it as possible with enough pressure and usually just ended up hurting their hands or squeezing wrong and getting an explosion of coal dust in their faces. And then his cousin had turned, eyeing him up and down. “Do you have any special abilities from your mom?” she’d asked bluntly.

“What abilities would Blitz have?” a neighbor kid had laughed. “Attract cats?”

“Maybe he has the power of looove,” his cousin teased and had shoved the neighbor at him. “Kiss him. See if you fall under his spell.” It had been embarrassing, and Blitz had abandoned their game to go home right then and there, his cousin complaining to his aunt and uncle that Blitz was being mean and didn’t want to play with her anymore.

The problem was… he didn’t love anyone. Except his dad. Oh he loved his dad fiercely. He ran into some of Junior’s friends once while out alone. And the only thing that stopped him from absolutely getting his ass handed to him by a bunch of adult dwarves was that he was still a kid, and they didn’t feel comfortable beating him up. So they gave him a warning to watch his mouth, and sent him skittering back home under a dark cloud of frustrated anger.

He loved his dad. And Bili worked so hard and was so good and it wasn’t RIGHT that Junior would cruelly and maliciously destroy his reputation. A dwarf that cannot practice his craft is practically no dwarf at all. Blitzen remembered, sitting with his father in their shop front, watching people walk by. Watching them glance over, and then whisper and walk away faster. Destroyed heart and soul just because Junior couldn’t accept the truth. What was so WRONG with being wrong? Especially when Junior knew Bili was right!

In the end, it was that need to redeem himself and his reputation that drove his dad to his death. He loved his craft – it was his life and his soul and his passion. Without it, he was already slowing dying from heartbreak.

Even knowing that, Blitz had begged his father not to go check on the wolf. Begged him to stay. It wasn’t worth the risk. But his dad had squeezed his shoulder, told him, he _had_ to go. And just like that, his father was gone.

He’d picked up his father’s cause in his absence, and alienated a lot of people in the process as he called Junior out, again and again, every opportunity he could. Until Junior let him know, in very clear and certain terms, that he was done being nice just because he was a kid. Blitzen was getting older. Next time he saw his face, he was going to kill him for the slander Blitz had done him.

And maybe he would have chased the honor of his dad’s name, pursed Junior more doggedly, and thrown his life into trying to prove him wrong and that he’d destroyed his beloved father for his own vanity, if not for one thing.

A sickly looking elf that fell into his life, pretty much literally.

The disorientated, hungry, lost, and confused young elf was nothing like anything Blitz had heard about in school. Elves were haughty. Elves were aloof. Elves were creatures of air and light. This one, clothed entirely in white, he seemed to try to take up as little space as possible, with a dry sense of humor composed mostly of sarcasm and sass.

Two half-grown children alone in the worlds. Different and outcast in unlike ways. Longing for something to fill the emptiness in their hearts. 

They’d imprinted on each other, pretty much the moment Hearthstone opened his eyes.

Hearthstone sometimes says that Blitzen saved him, but Blitz knows better. They’d saved each other.

Together, they’d finished growing up. Becoming adults and deciding what to do with their lives once Blitzen was finished with trade school. And they’d shared everything. Not just their food and the home Blitz’s dad had left behind. But their stories, their pasts, their pain, their hopes and dreams.

Hearth had been the first one to use the D-word. Curiously asking one day, probably a good four or five months after Blitzen had found him, why no other dwarf he’d met used the title Blitz did. Son of Freya. That was an honorific for Svartalfs, right?

Blitzen had to awkwardly try to explain that no, Freya, that Freya, was his mother. As in, his actual mother. Hearth’s mouth had actually dropped open in shock, which was really funny back then and still amusing to think about now. It was one of the biggest shows of emotion he’d ever seen from the elf.

_Your mother is a goddess?!_ Hearthstone had signed ‘loudly’. _Why didn’t you tell me?_

Blitz had shrugged, embarrassed. “It’s not important. It doesn’t mean anything.”

_Blitzen, you’re a **demigod!**_

“I’m a dwarf,” he’d snapped, and Hearth’s hands fell to his lap. Blitz had made himself take a few deep breaths, and then had relocated to sit next to his friend instead of across from him. “Okay, yes, technically. But that doesn’t mean anything. Not to them,” he gestured towards the door, “And not to her. Its not like she imparted any great gifts on me.”

They’d sat there in complete stillness (and thus silence) for a few long moments, and then Hearth’s hands finally came back up, and there was a small smile in his eyes. _I don’t know,_ he signed, _You exist here, right now, as my friend. That’s quite a gift if you ask me._

Blitz had shoved Hearthstone over onto the couch and had tried to smoother him with a pillow, making sure that his eyes were free for him to see Blitz complain “What was that!? What even was that? Silly elf!”

What a pair they were though. A deaf elf from a society that demanded perfection. And a child of the goddess of love, who loved no one. 

He supposed… at some point… that had changed. 

He was ready to die, rather than have Hearthstone go back to his father’s house for the Skofnung Stone. He’d faced a dragon and made it retreat from trying to attack Hearthstone. He’d stand between him and anything in all the worlds. At some point, he’d let himself love him more than life itself. And he’d protect him with all his power.

Blitz put his hand over Hearth’s – firm enough to feel but not to hinder him from trying to sign. He moved enough to draw his friend’s graze, he didn’t want to have to repeat this.

“I hate the D-Word,” and Hearth’s lips quirked just a little, “But, I get it. If this is her gift, I’ll take it.” Maybe even try to figure out how to harness it, in a safe and controlled way.

Hearth nodded and closed his eyes again, letting out a deep breath.

“Silly elf,” Blitz murmured.

A gift, from his mother of all people. “The strength to protect what matters.”

**Author's Note:**

> I believe that Hearthstone and Blitzen have known each other for years longer than just the 2 they spent with Magnus on the streets. Not only do they refer to side adventures (the giant illusion to make Blitzen a warthog, Magnus's comment that they had clearly piggy back thing before though he'd never seen it) but Hearthstone also has clear and indepth knowledge about Blitzen's actions and habits surrounding things that would have happened before Magnus - like knowing what a Making is, knowing that Blitzen always makes ducks when paniced and rushed to create. Blitzen says he's 20 - so he was only 18 when he met Magnus. Which means he was only a mid-teen when he and Hearthstone actually met.


End file.
